especially as we are having these fiscal cliff discussions in washington figuring out who is getting tax breaks cutting loopholes and so forth. >> the reality is we spend close to a trillion dollars on the year assistance to the poor, cash, food housing medical care that does not include social security and medicare. that's about $9,000 for each recipient. 100 million people receive this aid. it's a huge amount of spending. it's ridiculous to pretend that we can spend all that money and still have kids that don't have food to eat all over the country. this is really an advertising tool poverty measure and advertising tool for expanding the welfare state and spreading the wealth. by pretending that there is a massive amount of hardship that really doesn't occur anymore in our society. >> perhaps not getting the resources to those who truly need it the most. robert rector, senior fellow at the heritage foundation. thank you for being on this morning. >> thank you. >> coming up on the show, it's been over a month since they met with fema and the president, but the sandy victims haven't